Posts tagged ‘Legendary Pictures’

Sigh. The few reviews I read about this ahead of time were pretty mixed, so this is yet another film that I went into with lowered expectations.

Oh dear. That is one big pile of shit.

I’m convinced that two more script revisions and some extra thought given to the casting process is all they would’ve needed to turn this into a fantastic piece of moviemaking. Alas, no. Most of it is crap. Watching this on the big screen was a major waste of time and money for me.

Where do I start? The script: stupid people doing stupid things, with too many blatant attempts at homages to classic scenes from the first film. Every time I hit one of those moments, it pulled me out of the story. With the exception of Owen and Barry, the characters weren’t characters; they were caricatures at best, completely cardboard at worst. (And I had to actually look up the name of Omar Sy’s character, because I don’t even remember anyone ever calling him by name in the film.) I’m also convinced that Owen and Barry were as good as they were entirely because of Chris Pratt’s and Omar Sy’s acting abilities and personalities, not because of how the screenwriters depicted them.

The cast: Chris Pratt and Omar Sy were excellent. Everyone else could be flushed down the toilet for all I care. Especially the two lead kids. For the love of all you consider holy, if you are going to have kids carry two of the lead roles, you have to make sure that the child actors are able to make us care enough about the kids to carry us along for the emotional ride. Rooting for the dinos to rip people apart here is like rooting for the zombies to rip people apart on The Walking Dead. I desperately wanted these two kids to be shredded and eaten alive, and was tremendously disappointed when that didn’t happen.

Likewise for Bryce Dallas Howard. Are you telling me that Claire *REALLY* can run all over the place like that in those shoes?!? Plus, earlier in the film she is in a near panic, desperately forcing Owen to take her out into the park to rescue the two boys. Then what happens? They stop. For a long time. To have a pseudo-emotional moment with a dying apatosaurus. What the fuck?!? From a character standpoint, that makes *NO* sense! It does make sense for Pratt’s character, but not for Howard, at least not in the sequence of moments leading up to that scene.

And I’m sorry, but the mosasaurus moments were all blatantly telegraphed in advance. What could have been two really cool bits were spoiled by foreshadowing heavy enough to slap you in the face.

Lastly, are you telling me that, after laying completely dormant for 20ish years, there is still enough juice in the batteries to power that pair of night vision goggles and to get one of those jeeps started? I really don’t think so.

I’ve had enough. This is the worst of the Jurassic Park series. I’ll rewatch The Lost World again before I’ll rewatch this one.

Now THIS is how you make a Godzilla movie. After the previous horrible gaijin attempt to make one, I am flabbergasted by how much they got RIGHT this time.

Make the movie about the characters, not about Godzilla.

Sprinkle li’l bits of teaser fights throughout the film. Leave the big ol’ all out kaiju slapdown ’til the end. “Let them fight.”

Put a heavy emphasis on sound design and sound editing.

The pacing is immaculate – let the tension build and build and build on a slow burn over time.

Make. It. Scary.

I think the last time a Godzilla movie came close to scaring me was Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster back in 1972. But I was only six at the time, so that’s understandable.

And that HALO jump … oooooooooh … what a beautiful sequence.

My only complaint is it seemed like they misunderstood how EMPs work. They show EMPs knocking out all electrical systems, then the systems all seem to magically come back on afterwards. Nope, my understanding is that the EMPs would fry the circuits, damaging them enough that they would no longer be functional. Period. And they made a comment about the EMPs interfering with tracking the things by satellite. Um, nope. I can’t imagine a ground-based EMP affecting anything in orbit. Unless they threw in a bit of technobabble dialog that I missed.

Aside from that, this long-time Godzilla fan was very seriously impressed.